This sentence has been uttered at least 3 times last night during last night film viewing of the FIFDH Geneva Human Rights Film Festival. In her beautiful and desperate Arabic by Fadwa Suleiman and in French by tireless human rights defender Carla Del Ponte.

To these two ladies and to all Syrian women who suffer a tragedy in our indifference or helplessness, I would like to dedicate this International Women Day.

Women do not appear much in thefilm (click on link) I saw last night, as one film attendee rightly noticed. But what I saw left me a lasting impression that I know about a crime and haven’t done much neither in contributing, supporting or writing about it?

Why is that? Maybe because I supported the Arab Spring in Tunisia and now almost feel sorry I did because the situation there is not getting any better, to use an euphemism! Maybe it’s just as well we let Syrians sort their problems on their own, fair enough…but women, men and children are dying every day, and their doctors, their last resorts in fact, are being particularly targeted by their own government as killing a doctor is indirectly killing thousands of civilians.

These civilians are not necessarily taking part in the conflict, but if they are not rich enough to flee, they are trapped all the same. We might be afraid of indirectly helping Salafists by helping Syrian opponents to the regime, fair enough, but this means that we agree that women, men and children die simply because they are Syrians.

When you think that Bachar El-Assaad is a doctor himself, that he pledged to save lives and now agrees to be the dictator of a dying country, this is a plot Shakespeare would have loved, the tale of a man who was not even his father’s favorite successor, who was for a time the hope of a turn towards democracy, who himself is a father…and who accepts that his people kills their own. If one doctor ought to die, I believe I know who it is and he’s got a ready made necrology if you click on this link!

As one of the opponents in the film rightly said, the bullets are shot by men who have been trained with my tax money. And these bullets are made and provided by Russia, becoming once again a rogue State in this conflict.

We know democracy has a price, as in the Merchant of Venice:

Go with me to a notary, seal me there
Your single bond; and, in a merry sport,
If you repay me not on such a day,
In such a place, such sum or sums as are
Express’d in the condition, let the forfeit
Be nominated for an equal pound
Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken
In what part of your body pleaseth me. (1.3.17)

But the combat is unequal and unfair, and in some instances, most instances in fact, it’s the silent majority who suffers the most.

So what is the world doing? What is the Red Cross doing? What are we doing? What are we doing, fellow members of Académie Sans Frontières?

I certainly don’t have the answer but invite you all to let the Syrian Women, today, know that we care for them, that we will contribute at least to send food and drugs to those people who die in silence in their home or in screams of pain in secret hospitals because the hospitals have now been totally destroyed.

I saw a remarkable Geneva Doctor, last night, Tawfik Chamaa, a long time Syrian opponent who is also the spokesman of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations, a federation of Medical doctors prepared to take the risk of helping their fellow coutrymen and do what the Red Cross doesn’t seem to be doing properly, which is to bring relief to those who need it instead of giving this support to El-Assaad who should then probably be redistributing it to the people he’s sending troups to kill…! Chamaa regularly goes to Syria beyond the fireline to bring support and medical assistance to hidden hospitals. He’s helped by doctors from all over the Arab World who sympathize with the suffering of other Arabs.

So, if you are afraid that your support goes to Salafists by helping a Syrian Organization (although I met Tawfik last night and guarantee he’s a humanist, certainly not a fanatic.), then support MSF!

Dr. Chamaa told us all last night that he begged us tonight to be outraged (“indignez-vous”)…what he didn’t dare say but thought and told me privately later is that he would have wished to say, be outraged by your indifference. This man had tears in his eyes when he watched the two movies presented last night. Barack Obama, says Carla Del Ponte, is the last hope for the Syrian women. Barack, you have a Nobel Peace Award…time to honor it and honor the Syrian Women today!

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Published by Cosmo

Daphné Romy-Masliah, Scottish baroness of Barnis-Forbes, is French born, Swiss resident and teacher, Ph.D. from the Department of Anglo-American Language and Literature department of the Sorbonne, invited Professor at the University of Sidi Bel Abbes, Alger and a citizen of the world with infinitely spreading Mediterranean roots.
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